I was reminded of Thomas Friedman's book, "The World Is Flat," earlier this month when attending Inc. magazine's GrowCo conference in Nashville. In his book, Friedman discusses decentralized, collaborative, bottom-up development, where all competitors have an equal opportunity. After hearing from speakers at GrowCo, I realized that technology really has created a level playing field for global entry, collaboration and competition in all industries.

One of the best ways to prove this is how easy crowdsourcing is, thanks to the Internet. In short, crowdsourcing is the "American Idol" of the Internet. It provides anyone with a good idea the opportunity to be discovered. Here are a few examples of risk-takers breaking from conventional industry norms…